Graveyard slot

Example of U.S. TV dayparting: The white area is the overnight graveyard slot (2am – 6am), which is not considered important.

A graveyard slot (or death slot) is a time period in which a televisionaudience is very small compared to other times of the day, and therefore broadcast programming is considered far less important.[1] Graveyard slots are usually in the early morning hours of each day, when most people are asleep. Because there is little likelihood of having a substantial viewing audience during this time period, providing useful television programming during this time is usually considered unimportant; some broadcast stations go off the air during these hours, and some audience measurement systems do not collect measurements for these periods. Some broadcasters may do engineering work at this time. Others use broadcast automation to pass-through network feeds unattended, with no one outside of broadcasting authority-mandated personnel and emergency anchors/reporters present at the local station overnight. A few stations use "we're always on" or a variant to position their 24-hour operation as a promotional selling point, though as this is now the rule rather than the exception it was in the past, it has now mainly become a selling point for a station's website instead.

Contents

The most well-known graveyard slot in most parts of the world is the overnight television slot, after late night television and before breakfast television/morning show (between 2:00am and 6:00am). During this time slot, most people who are at home are asleep, and most of those who are awake are either at work, away from the television, trying to fall asleep, or just returning home from a bar and too intoxicated to pay attention, leaving only insomniacs, intentionally nocturnal people, and irregular shift workers as potential audiences. Because of the small number of people in those categories, the overnight shift was historically ignored as a revenue opportunity, although increases in irregular shifts have made overnight programming more viable than it had been in the past. In the United States, for example, research has shown that the number of televisions in use at 4:30am doubled from 1995 to 2010 (8% to 16%).[2]

Since the advent of home video recording, some programs in this slot may be transmitted mainly with home taping in mind. Among these are the BBC's Sign Zone and their former specialist service BBC Select, which were for specialist audiences.[3][4] Some channels may carry adult-oriented content in the graveyard slot, although programming of a pornographic nature is restricted to subscription channels in most countries because government communications regulations forbid pornography on over-the-air channels at any time of the day.

The slot is used in the United States by some niche networks to transmit live sports such as cricket, Nippon Professional Baseball, Philippine Basketball Association matches, and Australian rules football from Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and other nations where the American overnight is the Asian afternoon and evening. Some limited prime-time or noontime general programming from those nations is also transmitted live to the United States, and for anime sites such as Crunchyroll which have arrangements with Japanese networks to premiere episodes day-date-and-time, it can be considered that site's official primetime slot.

The United States graveyard slot is often the premiere slot for content streaming on demand. 12:01am in the Pacific Time Zone (or 3:01am Eastern and 7:01 or 8:01am UTC depending on daylight saving time), where the streaming provider Netflix is based, is when that provider often releases and premieres their series and films for the first time worldwide across all time zones, along with Amazon Prime. Hulu chooses to release their series at 12:01am Eastern.

Since the 1980s, graveyard slots, once populated by broadcasts of syndicatedreruns and old movies, have increasingly been used for program-length infomercials or simulcasting of home shopping channels, which provide a media outlet with revenue and a source of programming without any programming expenses or the possible malfunctions which might come with going off-the-air; the graveyard slots can also be used as dumping grounds for government-mandated public affairs programming, or for station groups which are required by their parent companies to carry programming, to air those shows otherwise unpalatable in prime timeslots; for instance with Sinclair Broadcast Group, a public affairs program by political commentator Armstrong Williams (who has business interests with Sinclair), The Right Side, is required to be aired by all Sinclair stations, but is often seen in graveyard slots on those stations instead of its intended weekend late morning slots as many Sinclair stations choose locally instead to present educational shows and paid programming at that time. The most often seen original programming in the overnight period in the past was daytime talk shows which had failed to find an audience in their original timeslots and are being burned off, though with cable networks airing the same talk shows, usually a same-day late repeat of a successful talk show or infotainment news program is now carried; this is prevalent in markets with sports teams where coach's shows and team highlight shows preempt primetime infotainment shows before primetime, allowing it to be seen in some form on a station without penalty to the syndicator.

No program that airs during an overnight graveyard slot may be counted toward the three minimum weekly hours of educational programming the U.S. government mandates stations carry each week.

In cases where a television station carries an irregularly scheduled sporting event that preempts the network prime time lineup, in many cases the station may air the preempted programming in a graveyard slot during the same broadcast day to fulfill their contractual obligations.

The Big Three television networks in the United States all offer regular programming in the overnight slot (ABC and CBS use overnight newscasts, with an emphasis on sports scores from West Coast games that typically conclude after 1am ET and international financial markets with the ending of the Australasian and beginning of the European trading day, all of which takes place between 2 and 5am ET, and NBC, which dropped its overnight news in the late 1990s, replays the fourth hour of Today). Each network also produces its early morning newscast at 4am local time so that it may be tape delayed to air before local news. Also, since the proliferation of digital video recorders, several cable and satellite outlets have begun airing original or rarely seen archival programming in these time slots to make them available to those recording them on DVRs (special restrictions prevent stations from using the overnight graveyard slot for E/I shows). An emerging trend in the United States is an increasingly early local newscast, which now begins as early as 4:00am in some major markets, targeting those who work early shifts or are returning from late shifts; this early newscast would fit into the overnight daypart rather than breakfast television.[2]

The graveyard slots' lack of importance sometimes benefits programs. Producers and program-makers can afford to take more risks, as there is less advertisingrevenue at stake. For example, an unusual or niche program may find a chance for an audience in a graveyard slot (a current day example is Adult Swim's FishCenter Live, which features games projected onto the video image of an aquarium), or a formerly popular program that no longer merits an important time slot may be allowed to run in a graveyard slot instead of being removed from the schedule completely. However, abusing this practice may lead to channel drift if the demoted programs were presented as channel stars at some time.[5]

Japanese over-the-air stations broadcast late night anime almost exclusively, starting in the Late night television slot at 11:00pm, but bridging the graveyard slot and running until 4:00am. Because advertising revenue is scant in these time slots, the broadcasts primarily promote DVD versions of their series, which may be longer, uncensored, and/or have added features like commentary tracks, side stories and epilogues.[6]

BBC One showed Sign Zone from 2000 to 2013 during this time before simulcasting with BBC World News (in a 3 way simulcast between BBC One, BBC News Channel and BBC World News for the second part). Nowadays, BBC World News comes on usually after midnight or 1am depending on which films or programmes are broadcast usually followed by Weather for the week ahead BBC Two shows Sign Zone and repeats for the first part and then either closes down which is marked in schedules as "This is BBC Two" ITV shows Jackpot247 (After Midnight on STV; Teleshopping on UTV) and then a repeats before showing ITV Nightscreen until 5:05 am on weekdays followed by The Jeremy Kyle Show, and 6am at the weekend. Channel 4 shows repeats and films during these hours apart from Wednesdays where sports including, Motor Racing, Triathlon and Beach Volleyball are shown. During the National Football League season for American football, the American NBC's Sunday Night Football game, along with playoff games and the Super Bowl, are carried live, which is often also the case with other popular American sports airing in primetime in the UK on Sky Sports and BT Sport. Channel 5 shows Supercasino and some repeats. Most digital channels during this time either go off air or show simulcast with shopping channels and some stay on the air. BBC News Channel simulcasts with BBC World News during these hours.

Examples of graveyard slots in the United States, outside of the traditional overnight slots, include:

Weekdays, noon Eastern

This time slot became a "death slot" for network programming as local midday news became more popular in the 1970s. CBS still offers an option for affiliates to air The Young and the Restless at noon Eastern, mainly so that Central Time Zone affiliates can air local news at noon CT; but actual participation in this varies by individual station. Local news in this slot usually consists of the morning newscast's stories repeated with spare updating, farm reports in mainly rural markets, and community interest segments where organizations are highlighted in an interview setting, along with paid placement advertorial segments for businesses. Stations that do not carry news in this slot usually air syndicated fare or an infomercial; in numerous cases, educational programs can be buried in this slot or any other daytime slot as a form of malicious compliance with the mandate for such programs. Prior to the 1970s, this slot was a popular "lunch slot", and shows such as Jeopardy! were popular in the time slot.

Weekdays, 4pm Eastern

When the noon time slot became unfavorable in the late 1970s, networks began doubling up airings of their noon shows at 4pm. Increases in syndication during the early 1980s led to networks having fewer and fewer affiliates in this time slot as well, and eventually all networks abandoned regularly programming the slot by 1986 (incidentally the same year The Oprah Winfrey Show debuted; Oprah soon came to dominate the time slot), and until 1996, occasional afterschool specials for children. Since the 1990s, the expansion of local television news has led to stations without major syndicated hits choosing to offer local news in this hour. By 2012, most networks' daytime programming had ended at 3pm Eastern, and many stations have begun offering up to three hours of local news, interrupted either by a 4:30 syndicated program or the 6:30 network news.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, several television series emerged that became widely popular among the viewing audiences (such as Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Miami Vice), and most programs that were scheduled against them were doomed to cancellation because of the competition, which marked the beginning of a phenomenon known as the "Friday night death slot."[7][8][9] Fewer viewers stayed home to watch television on Friday nights beginning in the mid-1990s, particularly those in the much-sought after 18–49 demographic, which prompted a revival of the phrase in a new context in that a series on Friday was still more likely to lose money and lag in viewership compared to shows on other nights, regardless of its direct competition.[10][11] Also, with media conglomerates now owning both television networks and film studios, the former must downplay programming by corporate demand to attract moviegoers to theaters on the traditional opening night for major films. As such, programs that air on Friday nights tend to lag behind in viewership compared to those on other weeknights, and networks have since programmed inexpensive reality programming or news magazines in this slot instead of scripted programs. Scripted programs that end up in Friday night slots have often been moved there from more lucrative Monday-Thursday evening time slots due to poor performance, and this is often an indication that the series is facing cancellation. This was the case with ABC's 8 Simple Rules in 2004–05, and Fox's 'Til Death in 2009–10 (the latter show kept alive in that time slot to garner enough episodes for syndication).Since 2005, CBS is the only major network that continues to air a full line-up of first-run scripted programming on Fridays, and has become successful with this time slot in the last 15 years. The CW has also maintained an entire primetime schedule of scripted programs since 2010, with similar success.Despite being a known graveyard slot, there have been notable exceptions to this rule, such as The Brady Bunch, Sanford and Son, Full House, Homicide: Life on the Street, Reba, Numb3rs, Ghost Whisperer, CSI: NY, and Shark Tank. In addition, a handful of cable channels have also had success with Friday night programming. This includes USA Network, which had a lineup of original programming on Friday evenings from 2002 to 2010 featuring Monk as the lineup's centerpiece, and Disney Channel, which since 2006 has successfully maintained a schedule of largely scripted Friday night programming which appeals to pre-teens and young teenagers (including series such as Wizards of Waverly Place, Phineas & Ferb, The Suite Life on Deck, Jessie and most recently Girl Meets World). Original made-for-TV movies occasionally premiere in the slot several times per year as an attempt to keep potential movie-goers at home. ABC had notable success on Friday evenings with its TGIF lineup beginning in 1989, but the time slot's ratings began to wane in the late 1990s. ABC made another attempt at Friday success in the 2012–13 season, moving the family-oriented Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing to Fridays for its sophomore season. Despite this move, the show's ratings held steady from the previous season, when it aired on Tuesdays, and continued to air Fridays for another five seasons.

Weekend afternoons

Particularly when no sporting events are airing, there is very little incentive to watch television after Saturday morning news programs or Sunday morning talk shows end, especially with NFL or college football, where most stations refuse outright to put on competitive programming if a local team is playing on another station carrying that game. Most stations air infomercials, movies, or little-watched syndicated fare in this slot. ABC airs reality television reruns in the late afternoon slot.

Because people generally stay out later on Friday and Saturday nights than other nights of the week, people also tend to sleep in longer on weekend mornings. The weekend morning 5 – 7am time slot is the most common time for stations to air public affairs and (on Sundays) televangelism programs.

Sunday nights, 7 – 8pm and 10 – 11pm

Because of overruns from National Football League (NFL) games, Fox (in the earlier slot) and, to a lesser extent, CBS (in the latter slot) have had difficulty launching shows in these time slots. Fox and CBS both use different strategies to handle overruns, with other networks attempting various means of counterprogramming to meet parity on the night:

Fox would preempt its programming in the early time slot if an NFL game overran its time slot, often to the frustration of fans of series such as King of the Hill and Malcolm in the Middle, who often had episodes joined in progress or unseen in the Eastern or Central time zones until summer reruns after games ended. Fox has since addressed the issue by clearing out the time slot completely for an NFL post-game show titled The OT during the NFL regular season and setting aside a portion for short-run animated series under its Animation Domination (later Sunday Funday) block, though mid-season replacement series have still had problems finding an audience in the time slot.

CBS protects its acclaimed newsmagazine 60 Minutes by delaying its entire prime timebroadcast programming schedule if a game overruns, resulting in the show scheduled for the 10pm slot being pushed well past its original start time and occasionally being bumped.[12] CBS also attempted to stabilize the 10pm slot by moving its established series CSI: Miami from its original Monday night slot to Sunday nights instead of trying to launch a new show in the usually troublesome slot; CSI: Miami was nonetheless canceled after two seasons in its Sunday time slot, and as of 2018, the last show of the evening, Madam Secretary is pre-empted occasionally if a game runs long to allow local newscasts to air.

NBC holds the Sunday Night Football contract that takes up the entire night during the fall and early winter, and carries the pre-game show Football Night in America within the 7 p.m.-8 p.m. timeslot, which uses a carousel reporting format to cover early games before NFL action ends, and then transitions to a quick rundown of all games before focusing on the upcoming game within the last twenty minutes before the game starts. After their NFL coverage ends in mid-January, NBC counts on carrying Dateline NBC in the slot during the NFL offseason (in the 90's NBC attempted to compete full-force with 60 Minutes with a string of unsuccessful hard newsmagazines before relying on the lighter or true crime-focused Dateline).

The CW (and in the past The WB) has had varied scheduling strategies since the network's 1995 launch involving Sunday evenings. From 1995 until 2001, The WB aired new programming (usually sitcoms) in the 7 p.m. slot, and then from 2001 until 2007, aired encore programming (Seventh Heaven, Gilmore Girls and Reba) under the secondary titles Beginnings and Easy View. In the 2007-08 season it featured advertorial entertainment programs (CW Now and Online Nation) widely considered a failure, with sitcom repeats returning to the slot after the Super Bowl. In 2008-09, the slot carried In Harm's Way, a reality series from the timeslot's lessee (Media Rights Capital) also considered a failure, and after that year, the CW returned Sunday evenings to their affiliates, leaving the night completely until returning in 2018-19. It decided in that schedule form to not program the 7 p.m. slot, starting their programming at 8 p.m. to avert programming around football.

UPN generally never programmed Sunday nights, with its only contribution to the night being lower-tier XFL football games on Sunday evenings during the league's only season in its first iteration. Its de facto successor MyNetworkTV has never programmed the night.

Opposite popular annual programming specials

Programs such as the Academy Awards, Super Bowl, and the Olympic Games; as well as seasonal airings of popular classic films such as The Wizard of Oz, have been known to draw so many viewers that almost all efforts to counterprogram against them have failed. As such, broadcasters have traditionally countered these events with either reruns or movies. The Super Bowl has historically attracted more unusual fare (such as Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl, a football-themed special consisting of puppies at play),[13] with most aiming to counter the halftime show to emulate Fox's success with its live In Living Color special in 1992. However, as all four major commercial networks now have some tie to the National Football League's television deals (with all but ABC alternating to air the game), major networks have aired little to no new original programming on the night of the Super Bowl under an unsaid gentleman's agreement.[14]

Opposite dominant television series

On occasion, a regularly scheduled program may have this kind of dominant drawing power. Notable examples included NBC's The Cosby Show for most of the mid- and late-1980s, ER during its peak in the second half of the 1990s (at the time when NBC's Thursday primetime schedule represented the most watched television programs of the decade), and Fox's American Idol during its peak in the mid-2000s and early 2010s (at the peak of reality television in the U.S. during those decades) - each of which was dubbed a "Death Star" by the other networks because of the show's consistent ability to dominate the ratings.

In Australia and New Zealand, overnight is from midnight to 06:00, and this slot generally consists of American sitcoms and dramas which ended up failing in their home market but need to air in some form to justify the network's investment, or archived content, along with teleshopping programs, lower-tier American syndicated newsmagazines, and American breakfast television programmes delayed to fill the remainder of the slot.

In Canada, federal regulations require television channels and radio stations to carry a certain percentage of Canadian content (or Cancon). It is common for most privately owned television channels to air the bulk of their Cancon in such graveyard slots (especially weekday mornings and Saturday nights), ensuring they can meet their required percentages of Canadian programming while leaving room for more popular foreign programming in other time periods. For over-the-air terrestrial television stations, the overnight hours are generally not subject to Canadian content requirements, allowing some opportunity for niche or experimental programming during those hours, although most commonly infomercials air instead. Canadian radio stations have similar practices regarding broadcasts of Canadian music, known pejoratively as the "beaver hour". For the most part in modern times however, Cancon requirements are filled easily by television stations throughout the week through local newscasts and magazine programming, along with licensed versions of American programs such as ET Canada.

^Katherine Phillips. "Witty sitcoms scheduled in Friday night death slot," Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 28, 1986, page 46: "ABC is sending two of this season's brightest new sitcoms to certain death at the hands of J.R. Ewing and his Dallas clan."

^John Voorhees. "ABC reshuffles schedule for ratings but deals only two new shows," The Seattle Times, December 13, 1985, page C5: "Also being dropped is Our Family Honor, the ABC series that has had the distinction of being the lowest-rated Nielsen show almost every week since its debut. It is in the Friday night death slot of 10 pm, against Miami Vice and Falcon Crest.'

^Knight-Ridder News Service. 'Family Honor' ditched for 'Spenser', Lexington Herald-Leader (KY), October 19, 1985, page C6: "Spenser: For Hire, the above-par detective series starring Robert Urich, is being moved out of the Friday-night death slot opposite Miami Vice and Falcon Crest. ... To make room for "Spenser," ABC is taking "Our Family Honor" off the air [Tuesdays], at least for a while and perhaps permanently.